Rwanda and the Pentagon's Predator Drones

KPFA Weekend News, 04.23.2011:

KPFA Weekend News Host: The prevailing narrative  of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide is that extremist Hutus massacred 800,000 or more Rwandan Tutsi and moderate Hutu, who tried to protect them. But, many scholars, journalists, and human rights investigators now argue that both Tutsi and Hutu massacred one another because of their ethnicity.

The truth is now more and more significant for all Africa, as NATO wages war in Libya, and U.S. policy lobbyists promote a proposal to use Predator Drones to "stop genocide," specifically to stop the next Rwanda or Darfur from happening elsewhere in Africa, such as Libya or Sudan. KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to a Rwandan American legal scholar and a Rwandan Genocide survivor about the Rwandan massacres of 1994.

Read more at anngarrison.com, http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/rwanda-genocide-excuse-for-predator-drones-over-africa .

Hate Speech: An Argument for Genocide, in the OpEdNews???

"Rwandans so poor to be sterilized"
Photo illustrating legal scholar Charles Kambanda's essay,
"Why sterilize the poor?"

Reading the OpEdNews, which the Wikipedia defines as a United States-based, progressive/liberal news, activism, and opinion website, on 04.06.2011, the 17th anniversary of the Rwanda Genocide, I came across some deeply dangerous, ethnic hate speech demonizing East/Central African Hutu people, in a piece of writing titled "Rwanda, a Light for the World."  

This piece of writing had already been promoted to the site's #3 headline, risen to #39 on the list of most viewed posts, and been reposted to Facebook four times. 

Its appearance, on a website that would never tolerate such talk of African Americans, Native Americans, or any other American ethnic group, demonstrates how widely accepted the official version of the Rwanda Genocide history, that Hutu extremists killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days, is----and, how widely accepted the consequent demonization and/or dehumanization of East/ Central African Hutu people is.   In order for this to be published in the liberal, "progressive" OpEdNews, an OpEdNews editor had to approve it.

Most ethnic hate speech is based on inaccurate information, but even if the official version of the Rwanda Genocide history were accurate, it could not possibly justify this wholesale demonization of Hutu people, which comes very close to an overt argument for genocide and/or, one form of genocide--- the Kagame regime's plan to sterilize 700,000 adult Rwandan males, which legal scholar Charles Kambanda so eloquently deconstructs in "Rwanda: Why Sterilize the Poor?"   (The majority of Rwandans are Hutu, and, very poor.)

Specifically, the author, Olga Bonfiglio, writes:

"Mass migrations have taken place since 1959 when Tutsi refugees spilled into the neighboring countries of Burundi, Congo, Uganda and Tanzania because Hutu regimes preached hate and discrimination. President Paul Kagame, who led the rebel army against the Hutu government in 1994 and subsequently quelled the 100-day genocide, was among those Tutsi families who fled to Uganda.

Since the Tutsi takeover of government, 3 million Hutu have left the country, some of them still lusting after Tutsi blood. This massive dislocation of the population is unsettling for Rwandans as well as for their neighbors who are forced to host refugees they don't want. Meanwhile, Rwanda remains one of the poorest, most densely-populated countries in the world with scarce resources to boot."

Even as she claims to be praising Rwanda a model for ethnic reconciliation, Bonfiglio sounds as though she would really like to exterminate---e.g., by sterilization---this Hutu refugee population which is "still lusting after Tutsi blood," and is such a burden, not only to neighboring countries who don't want them, but also to Rwanda, which is already so poor and overpopulated without them.

Rwandan President
Paul Kagame

Best I can say is that Bonfiglio at least acknowledges that there was a Tutsi takeover of the Rwandan government in 1994, a reality that Rwandan President Paul Kagame and most of his other propagandists are still trying to deny, claiming that they have instead abolished ethnic identification and privilege based on ethnic identification.   

Bonfiglio seems strangely unable to perceive the contradictions between:

1)  Her claim, like theirs, that Rwanda is "the light of the world," a model of reconciliation, and, 

2)  Her acknowledgment of an ethnic Tutsi takeover, and, 

3)  Her hate speech demonizing and dehumanizing Hutu people as so many have since the Tutsi, Rwandan Patriotic Front victory in the Rwandan Civil War of 1990-1994. 

For alternative accounts of the violence known as the Rwanda Genocide, argued from evidence, listen to Professor Peter Erlinder Speaks on Rwanda Genocide, on AfrobeatRadio.net, read Professor Peter Erlinder's The United Nations Ad Hoc Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR-TPIR): International Justice or Victor's Impunity, and/or Michel Chussodovsky's Rwanda: Installing a US Protectorate in Central Africa, on Global Research.

The LRA Excuse for Ugandan Troops in Congo---Again

LRA militia leader Joseph Kony

KPFA Audio link:  http://goo.gl/0kSN9


KPFA Weekend News Anchor:  Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni's state newspaper, The New Vision, has reported that the UN Security Council and the Democratic Republic of Congo have agreed to join Museveni's army, the Uganda People's Defense Force, in a new offensive to hunt Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, and Jamil Mukulu’s Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic.   The U.S.A.'s LRA Disarmament Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2010, authorizes funding, training, and collaboration with the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Defense, the US Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Intelligence Community to hunt down the LRA.   KPFA's Ann Garrison has more:

Uganda and its neighbors, the
Democratic Republic of
Congo, Central African
Republic, and Sudan. 

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  The Security Council, and the Congolese and Ugandan Defense Ministers said that the Ugandan Army needs to launch this new military offensive in Congo and the Central African Republic, or CAR, because the LRA keep raping and killing civilians there, though the UN Mapping Report released on October 1st, 2010, documents the Ugandan Army's own civilian massacres, mass rapes, and other sexual atrocities in Congo.   


Michael Kirkpatrick is a Black Star News contributor who has traveled back and forth to Uganda and its Acholi region frequently since 1998.  He says that Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army are always the most convenient excuse for military intervention: 

Black Star News contributor Michael
Kirkpatrick in Northern Uganda

Michael Kirkpatrick:   There is a pattern of demonizing Joseph Kony for every atrocity and every crime.  Joseph Kony has become demonized to justify military intervention by the U.S. and by other forces in that part of Africa. He's become a phantom menace.  He's almost like this mysterious fog that is just creeping around Central Africa but he's been able to survive for over 20 years.  He's nothing but a gang leader. He's a thug. He's a rag tag bunch of criminals that's somehow been able to survive for over 20 years. There's a reason he's been able to survive.  He is the bad guy in the battle.  To say that, somehow, modern armies haven't been able to capture, in twenty years, a rebel thug, is preposterous.  

Uganda's Rolling Stone tabloid's cover story
about Islamic "homo generals" with ties
to the Lord's Resistance Army.

KPFA:  Last November Uganda's fanatically homophobic tabloid newspaper Rolling Stone ran a story about what it called Islamic Homo Generals, meaning terrorists, with ties to the Lord's Resistance Army.   

For Pacifica, KPFA Radio, I'm Ann Garrison.

Gaddafi's Libya, African refugees, and European xenophobia

KPFA Weekend News, 03.06.2011:
Audio url:  http://bit.ly/gYgGzb

Vincent Harris reported that European governments
collaborated with Gaddafi to prevent migrants from
departing from making their way to  Europe from Libya's
long Mediterranean coastline.

KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Landau:  Black, Southern Africans in Libya are in peril consequent to both racism and Western media reports that Muammar Gaddafy is using quote unquote "African mercenaries," meaning Black, Southern Africans, to put down the Libyan uprising. Pleas for help have gone up on blogs in North Africa and both NGOS and multilateral organizations are seeking access, resources, and the relaxation of immigration restrictions, so as to evacuate those endangered.   KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  Aljazeera English recorded the voice of this Nigerian, who goes by the name of Courage, after he escaped an attack in Libya this week: 

Courage:  When I was coming from my work, I looked on my back.  There were car after me, chasing me.  They said I should stop.  I can't stop because they were holding cutlass and dangerous weapons with them.  I was running for my life.  If they had caught me that would have been the end of my life.  

Vincent Harris,  Dutch
creator of the blog Colored 
Opinionsand host of Colored 
Opinions Great Lakes Blogchat 
on Blog Talk Radio. 

KPFA:  Vincent Harris, creator of the Netherlands-based blog Colored Opinions, spoke with KPFA about what he calls xenophobic, anti-immigrant politics in Europe. He says European governments have a history of collaboration with Gaddafi to maintain a buffer zone meant to restrict African immigration to Europe by boat from the Libyan coast. Harris said that constraining African immigration is a high priority of most European governments and that, in exchange for his help with this goal, Gaddafi received military training for his army, and acceptance in European capitols,:

Vincent Harris:  They needed Gaddafi to solve this perceived problem, that Africans were crossing into Europe, from Libya.  They worked together to make sure that no Africans go into Europe. 

Harris added that North Africans are nevertheless likely to meet more xenophobia than Southern Africans in Europe because Europeans perceive North Africans as Muslims and Black, Southern Africans as Christians.  He also reported that on March 3rd, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, urged the European Commission to appeal to EU member nations to help evacuate and offer protection to 4,000 sub-Saharan refugees who are currently trapped in Libya.  Harris’s report, “Africans trapped in Gaddafy’s Libya” can be found on sfbayview.com and afrobeatradio.net.

For Pacifica, KPFA and Afrobeat Radio, I'm Ann Garrison.  

Africa advocates head to Congress re Congo atrocities

KPFA Weekend News Anchor Cameron Jones: The Great Lakes Region of Africa Coalition of peace and social justice activists in the U.S. is preparing for a March 2nd Congressional briefing on the UN Mapping Report documenting atrocities committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report was leaked on August 26th, 2010, and officially released by the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights on October 1st.

President and General Paul Kagame leads the army whose
crimes in Congo are documented in the UN Mapping Report
leaked 08.26.2010, and officially released 10.01.2010.

The armies of Congo's neighbors to the east, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, and most of all that of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, are most implicated, but the U.S. continues to collaborate with all three militarily. KPFA's Ann Garrison has more.

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  International, multilingual broadcast headlines following the August 26th leak of the UN Mapping Report were later combined into this sound collage to introduce "The contradictions of General Paul Kagame:," a video posted to the Youtube and Jambo News, a publication covering Africa's Great Lakes Region:

Audio collage of headlines:  (Audio collage of broadcast headlines during the week following the 08.26.2010 leak of the report.)

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  Despite the Mapping Report's documentation of atrocities including mass rape, civilian massacres, destruction of hospitals and other essential infrastructure, and even genocide, there have been no international criminal indictments. Within the last year Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, and Burundi's President Pierre Nkrunziza, all of whom are implicated in the UN report, held onto power in elections that much of the world understood as window dressing for dictatorship.



The U.S. and UK have continued to arm, train, and collaborate with the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi in Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere on the African continent. Last July the Pentagon awarded Northrop Grumman and three other defense and security contractors a $500 million contract to train the armies of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi and other African allies.

Jacques Bahati, Policy Analyst for the Washington D.C.-based Africa Faith and Justice Network spoke to KPFA about the Great Lakes Coalition's hopes for its March 2nd briefing on Capitol Hill:

Jacques Bahati:  Our goal is to rally U.S. support for justice for the crimes committed by the Rwandan, Ugandan, and Burundian armies and their Congolese collaborators in the war against Congo in 1996 to 2003.  Also we want the U.S. to take a clear stand on this issue, supporting the UN Mapping Report recommendations to set up an investigation to determine whether the targeted and massive killing of Congolese, Burundian, and Rwandan Hutu were a genocide.    

KPFA:  There have been many Congressional hearings and many UN reports about this.  What are you hoping might be different this time?

Jacques Bahati:  Well, we can't get tired.  We will continue to push and rally the international community for peace and stability of the region.  Although they might not hear us or they haven't heard us, we believe that one day they will hear what we are saying, because the evidence is very clear.  Many people died and justice has to be served.  

President  Barack Obama, as a Senator, authored Senate
Bill 2125, the Congo, Relief, Security, and Democracy
Promotion Act of 2006.

Ann Garrison:  Bahati also said that they would be asking Congress to push for implementation of Senate Bill 2125, the Obama Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006, and the only bill that President Obama, as a Senator, ushered into law on his own. The bill calls for appointment of a Special Envoy to the Congo, and for the cancellation of U.S. assistance to any country invading the Congo and plundering its resources, as the Mapping Report and previous UN reports demonstrate, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi have.

The Great Lakes Coalition is asking Americans to call their Senators and Congressmembers to ask them to attend the March 2nd briefing on the UN Mapping Report on Capitol Hill.  For updates on the hearings, see the websites of the Africa Faith and Justice Network and Friends of the Congo.

For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

(For Congressional contacts, see http://contactingthecongress.org/.)

Museveni's Casino: Anne Mugisha on Uganda's 2011 election

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni 
celebrates his 26th year in office. 

Anne Mugisha

"We knew exactly what was going to happen in this election.  We complained about the registers, we complained about the inflated numbers of people on the registers, we complained about the use of state resources in the election, but we still agreed to go in and participate.  So that's like walking into a casino, knowing that the guy who owns it has to make a profit.  Sometimes a few lucky people make some money.  But most of the time people lose.  So this time around I lost.   A few of our opposition people did scrape through, but the casino is owned by the ruling party and President Museveni and they would definitely be looking to make a profit.  So that's how I see this election, like a trip to the casino."  

--Anne Mugisha, 2011 candidate for Women's Member of Parliament in Uganda's Mbarara District                       

That's one quote, from my conversation with Anne Mugisha, opposition candidate for Women's Member of Parliament in Uganda's Mbrara District, on 02.19.2011, the day after Uganda's 2011 presidential and parliamentary polls closed.  She also reported that one of her volunteers came close to being arrested for objecting to the ruling National Resistance Movement's reps openly buying votes in the center of a village, and she talked about the need to build a culture of nonviolent protest in Uganda, a process that she said would take years.  Here's the conversation:

Audio link: http://goo.gl/fVKtL.

Museveni's Casino: Anne Mugisha on Uganda's 2011 election

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni celebrates his 26th year in office. 

Anne Mugisha

"We knew exactly what was going to happen in this election.  We complained about the registers, we complained about the inflated numbers of people on the registers, we complained about the use of state resources in the election, but we still agreed to go in and participate.  So that's like walking into a casino, knowing that the guy who owns it has to make a profit.  Sometimes a few lucky people make some money.  But most of the time people lose.  So this time around I lost.   A few of our opposition people did scrape through, but the casino is owned by the ruling party and President Museveni and they would definitely be looking to make a profit.  So that's how I see this election, like a trip to the casino."  

--Anne Mugisha, 2011 candidate for Women's Member of Parliament in Uganda's Mbarara District                       

That's one quote, from my conversation with Anne Mugisha, opposition candidate for Women's Member of Parliament in Uganda's Mbrara District, on 02.19.2011, the day after Uganda's 2011 presidential and parliamentary polls closed.  She also reported that one of her volunteers came close to being arrested for objecting to the ruling National Resistance Movement's reps openly buying votes in the center of a village, and talked about the need to build a culture of nonviolent protest in Uganda, a process that she seems committed to but said would take years.  Here's the conversation, just one paragraph fits into my KPFA Weekend News on Uganda's polls: 

Besigye to Ugandans: Eat Money Used to Buy Votes, then Vote Against the Thieves

Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's President for the past 26 years,
and his rival presidential candidate, for the third time,
Dr. Kizza Besigye. 

Ugandans began voting on Friday, February 18th, with the country's Daily Monitor reporting that there are 140,000 dead people, 5000 people 110 years and older, and half a million foreigners on the rolls.

"The dead people might be so appalled," said Ugandan American Newspaper Editor Milton Allimadi, that they might vote for the opposition this time.

Dr. Kizza Besigye urged any Ugandans selling their votes to Museveni and the NRM to eat the money, get a good meal, because it's their money; not anybody else's money.

"Eat it," he said, "and then go and vote against the thieves."

The Twitter hashtag for Uganda's election is #Ugandavotes.

KPFA Weekend News: Uganda the next Egypt?

KPFA Weekend News, 02.12.2011:

KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg:  One of Uganda's three leading opposition presidential candidates, and others, predict that Uganda could become the next Egypt or Tunisia after next Friday's presidential and parliamentary elections, which few expect to be free or fair.   Ann Garrison has more.

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  Last week the world watched Egyptians in the streets of Cairo, and heard voices of the Egyptian revolution on radio, TV, Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, and elsewhere on the Internet. They included the voice of this Egyptian street protestor, which nearly two million people have now heard on the Youtube alone:

Egyptian Street Protestor:  We will not be silenced.  Whether you are Christian, whether you are Muslim, or whether you are an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights, and we will have our rights, one way or the other.  We will never be silenced.

KPFA:  Milton Allimadi, Ugandan American editor of the New York City-based Black Star News says that Egypt's uprising was really a global uprising, with scenes beamed all around the world, and both Egyptians and Mubarak well aware that the rest of the world was watching.   Allimadi also agrees with Dr. Kizza Besigye that Uganda could be next.

He spoke to KPFA from New York City:

Milton Allimadi:  This should be seen as a sequence of events now, so the world will see this as interconnected.  Egypt was seen as connected with Tunisia, so I see this as a possibility in Uganda as well.  Ugandans are very savy; they're very sophisticated consumers of news and they watched developments in both Tunisia and Egypt very carefully.

KPFA:  The majority of Ugandans are subsistence farmers.  Do you have an idea of what kind of media and Internet access they have?

Milton Allimadi:  The majority of Egyptians are subsistence farmers as well, but the people that are connected to Facebook, the Internet, and to Twitter, live in the large cities such as Cairo.  The same applies to Uganda.  The sophisticated Internet consumers of news live in cities such as Kampala, Entebbe, Jinja, Gulu, Mbarara, Masaka, and these are the ones that would likely show their protest in these urban areas and that's where it counts.

KPFA:  So you think that, if there is an uprising, it will take place in the cities?

Milton Allimadi:  Absolutely; these kinds of uprisings invariably take part in the cities.  That's where most international, as well as local, media, are focussed and concentrated.    And, in Uganda, I think there's a sense by international media that this is a ground changing election, because the BBC, which has traditionally been very apologetic and sympathetic to President Museveni, has now for the first time deployed a major contingent of reporters inside Uganda, so the coverage is going to be very different and very significant this time around.

KPFA:  Do you know of any effort to block the news and or the Internet?

Milton Allimadi:  Not yet, but there may be plans to do that come election time.  And I know there are many organizations inside and outside Uganda who are working on setting up alternative networks to be able to disseminate information.

KPFA:  U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson flew into Kampala, Uganda last week to meet with Uganda's three leading opposition presidential candidates, Kizza Besigye, Norbert Mao, and Olara Otunnu, all of whom told them that Friday's elections will not be free and fair.  Steinberg and Carson then went on to meet with Ugandan President Yoweri Museven, who has been one of the U.S.A.'s closest allies and military collaborators since the end of the Cold War. Before leaving, Steinberg gave a speech at Kampala's Makerere University about the importance of free and fair elections, and protecting human rights for all, regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

For a longer version of this interview with Milton Allimadi and for ongoing updates on Uganda's election, see the websites of the San Francisco Bay View and AfrobeatRadio.net.

For Pacifica/KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

African and Peace and Justice Activists Worldwide Must Defend a Free Internet

I really can't say how important this is to peace and social justice activists.  There is no way I could have built the network I've built or joined the community of Africa peace and social justice activists I've joined without the Internet.  Some of the only hopeful news I could remember last year was the report of a new Internet infrastructure going up the West Coast of Africa and Europe.  Get more info and join the mailing list at internetyouneed.

KPFA News, 07.31.2010: Obama and the Militarization of Africa

Related links:
Black Star News: Will Obama Administration screw Africa, like all the rest?
San Francisco Bay View: Africa advocates to Obama: don't recognize Kagame's election

Erlinder released as Rwanda cracks down on its own

American Law professor Peter Erlinder returns

U.S. Law Professor Peter Erlinder returned from three weeks imprisonment from March 28th in Rwanda's capitol, Kigali, where he had traveled to act as Defense Counsel for embattled presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.  Ingabire remains under house arrest, unable to leave the country, and faces a possible 20 year prison sentence.  Both she and Erlinder are still accused of violating Rwanda's unique "genocide ideology" speech crime, which means disagreeing with the official history of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.   

A Rwandan judge agreed to release Erlinder but only on medical grounds, not in response to the argument that his free speech rights, and thus, by extension, the free speech rights of Victoire Ingabire and other Rwandans, are guaranteed by the international human rights covenants that Rwanda has signed or by Rwanda's membership in the Commonwealth. 

In his press conference at William and Mitchell College of Law in Minneapolis/St. Paul on Wednesday, 06.23.2010, following his return, Professor Erlinder thanked all the people around the world who had called for his release, and said that he owed his life to them and to the Internet.  He called it a triumph for people power, but he also said that it would not have occurred if he had not been a white American lawyer with friends, family, and allies capable of organizing and lobbying relentlessly for his release.

In Kigali, Ingabire said that Professor Erlinder's arrest demonstrated the nature of the Rwandan regime.  She called on all those who supported him to support Rwandans now.

She said, as Senator Russ Feingold, Chair of the Senate Subommittee on Africa has, in the Feingold Statement on the Fragility of Democracy in Africa, that the U.S should insist on democracy in Rwanda as a condition of its donor nation support. 

However, with Rwanda's 2010 election now only seven weeks away, and neither the FDU-Inkingi nor the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda allowed to contest the election, more and more Rwandans are losing hope and some have even concluded that only military invasion could unseat the Kagame regime, a possibility that President Kagame has attempted to circumvent by force repatriating refugees who might join a rebel army.

Assassins go after Rwandan exile General Kayumba Nyamwasa

On Saturday, March 25th, an unidentified gunman attempted to assassinate Rwandan exile General Kayumba Nyamwasa, an outspoken critic of President Kagame and a potential leader of a rebel army invading to overthrow him.  The gunman opened fire on Kayumba as he returned home from a grocery store in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ingabire condemned the assassination attempt as another example of Kagame's favored method of eliminating exile dissidents, and called once again for nonviolent political, not military, solutions. 

Rwandan exile and Ingabire supporter Jean Manirarora, now a microbiological research scientist in Louisville, Kentucky, also called for political solutions but said that General Kayumba has become the greatest threat to President Kagame because he is a Tutsi General popular with both Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis, and could thus lead a Hutu and Tutsi army into Rwanda, with credible claim to being a national liberation army, not an army of genocidaires.

"There is no sign of an army organizing to invade Rwanda," Manirarora said, but if there were and, if Kayumba were to lead it, no one one could say that he had come to finish off the Tutsi because he himself is a Tutsi.   

On Thursday, June 24th, hundreds of Rwandan opposition leaders and members, including P.S. Imberakuri Party leader and presidential candidate Bernard Ntaganda, were assaulted and arrested because of protest planned at Rwanda's National Electoral Commission that morning, as President Paul Kagame registered his candidacy and all the viable opposition was excluded.  On the same day, Deputy Editor of Rwanda's Umuvugizi Newspaper, Jean Leonard Rugambage, was shot dead on the way into his home in Kigali.   

Shocked and grief stricken Umuvugizi Editor Jean Bosco Gasasiras, now in exile in Uganda, accused Rwandan President Paul Kagame of ordering his security operatives to assassinate Rugambage.   General Kayumba Nyamwasa's wife Rosette continues to accuse Kagame of sending operatives to assassinate her husband, and Rwandan journalist Godwin Agaba, also in exile in Uganda, said that Rugambage had just written a story revealing a plot to poison Kayumba in his sick bed in South Africa, where he is recovering from last week's attempt on his life.

In the shadow of AFRICOM, the U.S. Africa Command 

These arrests and intrigue in Rwanda create urgencies that distract from an AFRICOM, U.S. Africa Command conference, which concluded in Kigali, at the same time Professor Erlinder was being released.  The conference was called to plan an August military "exercise" in Accra, Ghana, on the Gulf of Guinea, which is critical to the control of  West African oil and gas, and oil and gas transport corridors in the Gulf of Guinea and the rivers flowing into it.
   

On May 16, 2001, the Office of Vice President Richard Cheney produced a document titled West African Oil: a Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development, a "National Energy Policy Report."   For whatever reason,  the policy report's Web URL is: http://www.israeleconomy.org/strategic/africawhitepaper/pdf.

The Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported on the conclusion of the AFRICOM conference in a story with the headline "U.S. military not intending to control Africa" - says Army chief."    The RNA report quoted a senior Rwandan military chief saying, "

A new US military program training African armies including Rwanda is not a US move to dominate the African continent."

   

Many Africans, not only Rwandan and Congolese, and Americans, especially African Americans, seemed to believe that this statement reduced the credibility of the Kagame government, which also insists that it had nothing to do with the latest round of assassinations and assassination attempts in Rwanda and surrounding nations.  

Please contribute to support my independent reporting on Africa's Great Lakes region, and my advocacy for an end to Pentagon intervention

Please click on the "Donate" button in the upper right corner of this blog if you value my reporting on Rwanda, Congo, and Uganda, and my advocacy for an end to U.S.-Pentagon interventions there and everywhere.   Could you give $5, $10, $25 or more?   The first, and still the greatest number of those contributing to my work have been Rwandan, Congolese, and Burundian people making small contributions, though several Westerners have since contributed as well. 

I have been reporting on the Great Lakes region for Digital Journal, Global Research, the San Francisco Bay View, the OpEdNews, Colored Opinions, and KPFA and KMEC Radio, and posting video elaborations of my radio reports to my Youtube Channel. On Sunday, 03.21.2010, I recorded Law Professor Peter Erlinder, Lead Defense Counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) for this KPFA Radio News report, then posted the result to my channel with a video overlay, after which it appeared on the Global Research and Digital Journal websites.


Two days later I called Peter to say that I was ready to read and study the entire Rwanda Documents Project, if I can find some funding.  He said it would take me at least two months, with his regular guidance, and also told me, with considerable urgency, that he needs help writing a book explaining his years of research.


No one else has studied or reported on all the evidence which has led Peter to say, as a criminal lawyer, with evidence at hand, that the US and the UK financed the ongoing Central African War, first in Uganda, then Rwanda, and now D.R. Congo, and, that eight million African people have died. 

I've also spoken to Kevin Alexander Gray, African American writer and activist, Counterpunch and Progressive contributor, and author of Waiting for Lightning to Strike, the Fundamentals of Black Politics, who has offered to contact those he knows in the office of Senator Russ Feingold, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs.  And, to contact Reverend Jesse Jackson, and other leaders in the Black community, about urging African Americans to call on President Obama and their legislators to heed the Feingold Statement on the Fragility of Democracy in Africa.


We agreed that:


1)  Peace in the Great Lakes region depends on the end of UK and U.S. military, financial, and media support for the ruthless, highly militarized autocracy of Paul Kagame's Rwanda, especially now, during this critical election year, in which Rwandans should have the power to choose the president who will lead them for the next seven years.  This goal is consistent with the liberal democratic values that the U.S. government claims to represent and defend.   America's liberals, including President Obama, need encouragement to be good liberals.

Senator Feingold read the Feingold Statement on the Fragility of Democracy in Africa into the Congressional Record on March 2nd.  I came across it, barely noticed, on an Ethiopian website, then wrote the news for Digital Journal, Global Research, and the Black Star News. 


2)  Senator Feingold needs encouragement to meet with Dr. Peter Erlinder, who so feels the urgency of the Rwandan situation that he is willing to drive from St. Paul to Madison, WI, or fly to Washington D.C. immediately if an appointment can be arranged.


3)  I need to continue reporting, every week, on Rwanda's opposition parties ongoing efforts to enter the election, and need to keep asking Senator Feingold, and other members of the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs to respond.


Unlike Rwandan President Paul Kagame, I have no "donor nation" support and don't expect any, so I greatly appreciate the help of anyone who thinks this work needs to be done.    


Thanks.  --Ann Garrison

UK and US finance Central African War; eight million Africans die

KPFA Radio News broadcast, 03.23.2010:





As a law professor, criminal lawyer, and Lead Defense Counsel for the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, Professor Erlinder is very careful to be sure he has evidence supporting any statement he stands by, and he says the evidence is all here, in his Rwanda Documents Project which I'm just getting started on, http://www.rwandadocumentsproject.net/gsdl/cgi-bin/library


He knows he's on the Rwanda Hit List that Keith Snow reported last week, http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2010/03/the-rwanda-hit-list/, but said he's expendable because the documents are all there.


He also said that if there had been any reporters with audience at the ICTR in 2009 when the court ruled that there was no conspiracy to commit genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the received history of the genocide---including Kinzer's---and the RPF/Kagame regime's justification would have crumbled.


I told him that Kagame had compared the Rwanda Genocide to 09/11 when talking to Christiane Amanpour on CNN last week, and he said, "That would be ironic indeed, wouldn't it? If 09/11 really were a false flag," meaning a false history to rally around, like the received history of the Rwanda Genocide. 


But, he didn't want to comment on 09/11 beyond that, having no proof at hand.

San Francisco Bay View now in French and more

The "San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper," based in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., is one of the few publications in the United States that makes an effort to cover the African Continent and Diaspora.  During the Copenhagen climate talks, it published 'We Stand with Africa'; Africa Group shuts down climate talks, one of many reports in its "Africa and the World" section. 

This week the Bay View published a collection of my own online and radio reports on Rwanda's 2010 election, under the headline "Rwandan opposition parties condemn grenade attacks in Kigali."

And, this week they  added a translation button, just beneath the headline on each article, offering a long list of auto translation options, including of course French, the European language that most Rwandans speak more readily than English, although English became the official business language of Rwanda, after English speaking General Paul Kagame led the English speaking Rwandan Patriotic Front Army to power in 1994.  

Machine translations are of course funky and flawed, often downright comical, but, the funky flaws are usually obvious, and the machine translations generally communicate a report's essential meaning nevertheless.

Unfortunately, the translation button doesn't include an option for Kinyarwanda, the African language shared by all Rwandans, Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa, probably because such a button is not yet available, but it does include Kiswahili, Afrikaans, and quite a few languages I don't immediately recognize. 

A French translator is helping me create English-to-French annotation translations for my news videos about Rwanda, posted to the Youtube, and they're not quite done, but, given the French/English language competition still being negotiatied in Rwanda, I wanted to announce the addition of this translation button right away.

BELGIAN PARATROOPERS TO CRUSH RISING CONGO REBELLION?

Independent investigative journalist and human rights investigator Keith Harmon Snow has made repeated trips to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other parts of Africa.

I spent most of Sunday, 12.06.2009, studying this report by Africa and human rights investigator/reporter Keith Harmon Snow---so as to suggest edits that might make it more comprehensible to Americans unfamiliar with this part of the world, which is most Americans.  I suggested, first of all, maps identifying D.R. Congo, a.k.a., Congo-Kinshasa, in Africa, D.R. Congo's Equateur and Kivu Provinces, the nine nations bordering D.R. Congo, and the Obangui and Congo Rivers so important to this story.

The international corporate press is blocking this story out, or, as ever, publishing vague racist reports of African tribal savagery.  Keith Snow, writing in conscious being, describes instead a serious Congolese rebellion against elites controlling Congo's resources in the interest of foreign powers, and details:  

1) Mai Mai militia from South Kivu Province, on Congo's Eastern border with Rwanda, collaborating with rebels based in the city of Dongo, in Equateur Province, on Congo's border with the Republic of Congo, a.k.a., Congo-Brazzavile; 
2) Rwandan President Paul Kagame's Rwandan Democratic Front (RDF) forces flown across the country, from the East, to Equateur, 
3) Rwandans who went into exile after the Kagame/RPF takeover of 1994 crossing the border from Congo-Brazzaville into Congo-Kinshasa's Equateur Provice to join the Dongo rebellion; and, 
4)  Many Congolese, including defectors from the Congolese Army (FARDC) joining the Dongo and Mai Mai rebels, and,
5) MONUC (UN "Peacekeepers"), AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Command), forces from the neighboring Central African Republic, and Belgian and/or Belgian trained paratroopers moving into Equateur to put down the rebellion.


 

BELGIAN PARATROOPERS TO CRUSH RISING CONGO REBELLION?

Rwandan Defense Forces Flown into Western Congo Defeated; Kabila Regime Under Siege on Multiple Fronts

With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo's President Joseph Kabila has reportedly requested an immediate emergency military intervention from Belgium to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in the far western Congo.

Full text at conscious being, http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2009/12/belgian-paratroopers-to-crush-rising-congo-rebellion/.